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THE PIONEER TRAIL. 



THE 
PIONEER TRAIL 



BY 

ALFRED LAMBOURNE 

I. 




THE DESERET NEWS 

Salt Lake City 
1913 






Copyright, 1913, 
By Alfred Lambourne 



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Dedicated to the Memory of 
MY FATHER. 



PREFACE. 

"An Old Sketch-Book" and "The Old Jour- 
ney," the predecessors of "The Pioneer Trail," 
are now out of print, and the volume here offered 
to the public in their stead is to fill a demand for 
the original works. In the present book there 
is much additional matter to the letterpress of 
the first editions and, indeed, the character of 
the work is somewhat changed, the work being 
more an epitome of human emotion rather than 
one descriptive of scenery. These statements, 
however, have rather too important a sound as 
applied to such a short narrative as makes up 
these pages. Since the issue of "The Old Jour- 
ney," the sketches from which it was illustrated 
have been scattered here and there, and the 
vignettes from the original plates are given in 
their place. An explanation seems necessary to 



8 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

those who may purchase the book in its new 
form in anticipation of its being a duplicate of the 
former works. 

I lie at the side of a mountain road. The moun- 
tain is steep, the road is edged with trees. There 
are the wild-cherry, evergreens, and clumps of 
ancient shrub-oak. The road is now unused ; few 
pass over it, save it be the shepherds who take 
their flocks from the high pastures of one moun- 
tain range to those of another. What once had 
been ruts made by the wheels of wagons are now 
changed by rain and flood into deep-cut gullies. 
It is a place where, in the spring time, the air is 
fragrant from millions of snow-white blossoms, 
and where now on the branches of the cherry, 
hang clusters of crimson fruit. The piece of 
road is historic. At this, its steepest part, near 
"The Summit," and where it is crossed by ledges 
of stone and littered with boulders and shale 
that once tore the iron from the cattle's feet, I 
found an ox-shoe. The relic had lain here long. 
Down this road passed the Pioneers. 

There is stillness around. Over "The Little 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 9 

Mountain" arches a cloudless sky, the wide land- 
scape is bathed in sunlight. But this place, now 
so quiet and deserted, may yet become the scene 
of animation. The broken road is to be a high- 
way, preserved as a piece of "The Pioneer 

Trail." 

THE AUTHOR. 



FROM PREFACE TO PIONEER JUBILEE 
EDITION. 

Some years ago the author of this book was 
enabled to gratify an ambition to record in 
artistic form something of the scenes and some- 
thing of the incidents of the memorable pilgrim- 
age,The Westward March, from the once bor- 
ders of civilization to the Great American Des- 
ert— "An Old Sketch Book," Boston. S. E. 
Cassino, 1892. His purpose was not to publish 
a guide-book to the plains and mountains, for 
which there has been no occasion within the 
present generation, but rather a summary, a 
poetic-prose narrative of a typical journey, as 
seen through the memory and devoid of com- 
monplaces, the more salient features only loom- 
ing through the past. 

When the Jubilee Celebration of the strange 



12 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

journey — for it is that, and those who made it 
that we are this year honoring and commem- 
orating — was decided upon, it was suggested in 
consideration of the singular fitness of "An Old 
Sketch-Book" as a souvenir to be presented dur- 
ing the Jubilee to the Pioneers yet living, that 
letters were addressed to the Pioneer Jubilee 
Celebration Commission that speak for them- 
selves. Many of the names appended to the let- 
ters were recognized as belonging to the honored 
band of Pioneer men and women, while the 
others were of those who think that in this Ju- 
bilee Year those who crossed the plains and 
mountains in ox-teams would appreciate the 
receiving, and their descendants the giving of 
a work of this character. 

"An Old Sketch-Book," however, was a large 
and costly volume of a limited edition, and 
hardly manageable for the present purpose. The 
author therefore decided to place the sketches 
and descriptive matter in the form now used, 
under the title of "The Old Journey." The 
prompting to undertake the work was not merely 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 13 

encouraging but was made almost a duty by the 
commendations of the original volume, and had 
there been no other result from his labors, the 
author would have felt fully repaid for them by 
the expressions of approbation from the press 
as well as from those who saw the birth of the 
State and who watched its growth to the present 
hour. 

The author is one of those who "crossed the 
plains." As the years have gone and time has 
not only cast a sort of glamor over the event, 
but has given also to men an opportunity to re- 
flect seriously and in calmness and intelligence, 
that same Journey assumes greatness in our eyes, 
both in its inception and in its achievement. It 
finds a prominent place in the History of the 
West, and will ever stand forth among events. 
Indeed the world had heretofore seen nothing 
like it, and in the very nature of things its rep- 
etition is improbable, if not impossible. It must 
now be read ; it cannot be experienced. 

In presenting this edition there are no excuses 
to offer. The author has been true to nature and 



14 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

to history, and the publishers have done their 
part in a manner that must excite wonder and 
commendation when one thinks of what has 
been achieved in the wilderness, the advance that 
has been made in the art of the printer within 
the few years that have elapsed since the 
sketches appearing in the book were made. 

It hardly needs intuition to foretell success for 
this little volume. 

BYRON GROO. 

May, 1897. 



"Far in the West there Ues a desert land, where 

the mountains 
Lift, through perpetual snows, their lofty and 

luminous summits. 
Where the gorge, like a gate way, 
Opens a passage wide to the wheels of the emi- 
grant's wagon." 



PLATES. 

The Start from Missouri River. 

Nebraska Landscape with Prairie Fire. 

Morning at Chimney Rock. 

Camp at Scott's Bluffs. 

Laramie Peak from the Black Hills. 

Ford of the Green River. 

First Glimpse of the Valley. 




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.•* 



Captain John D. Holladay. 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 




HIS day, within the hour, I took from 
its place of concealment "An Old 
Sketch-Book." It lies before me 
now, I turn its leaves and live once more a past 
experience. Well, well ! How vividly this book 
brings to me again those stirring days! Why, 
these are days gone by this quarter, yes, nearer 
this half century! How unexpectedly we some- 
times come upon the past — turn it up, as it were, 
from the mold of time as with the plow one 
might bring to light from out the earth some lost 
and forgotten thing. This book, with its buck- 
skin covers, revivifies dead hours, makes me live 
again those times when life for me was new ; or. 
if not exactly that, brings them back in memorv 



20 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

as reminders of times and conditions now passed 
away forever. 

The book is a reminder, old, battered, dusty, 
yet truthful, of what an ox-team journey across 
the western plains and over the Rockies was in 
the years that are gone. 

The book so long neglected, now so full of in- 
terest, received hard usage in those former days. 
Before it lay at rest so long, gathering dust and 
cobwebs about it, like a true pioneer it was made 
to rough it in this world. It learned to with- 
stand the brunt of many a hard encounter. Mas- 
ter and book were companions on a long and toil- 
some journey. 

Inside and out; yes, the leaves and the covers 
all tell tales. This buckskin was drenched many 
a time by the thunder-storms of Nebraska and 
Wyoming; by the sleet and snow that fell upon 
the mountains. Between these sheets of vari- 
ously- toned gray paper, close to the binding, are 
little waves of red, gritty stuff, contributions, on 
some windy day, from the sand hills of the Platte 
Valley, or the Big Sandy Creek (the poetic Glis- 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 21 

tening Gravel Water of the Indians), or from 
"The Three Crossings" of the Sweetwater, or the 
wearisome piece of road leading from Platte to 
Platte — North and South — over the ridge and 
down into Ash Hollow. One end of the book 
has been submerged in water, a reminiscence, no 
doubt, of the fording of either the Platte, the 
Sweetwater, the Big or Little Laramie or the 
Green River farther on. O, there are many emo- 
tions revived within me by a sight of the book; 
they crowd upon me thick and fast ! These crisp, 
gray leaves of sage, where did they get between 
the leaves? It was, I believe, on one cool Sep- 
tember night, at Quaking Asp Hollow. I re- 
member that then great bonfires were blazing 
around our camp, and the red tongues of fiames 
showed by their light, wild groups of dancers — 
the ox-punchers performing strange antics; a 
fantastic dancing supposed to be under the pa- 
tronage of Terpsichore; or, at least, some more 
western muse; a something, as I recall it now, 
between that of our modern ball-room and the 
Apache Ghost-Dance. 



22 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

Remarkable that those sketches can suggest 
to me so much! Yet it is that which is unseen 
that fills me with amaze. Turning over the leaves 
it all comes back. "The Journey" is no longer a 
dream ; it becomes again a reality ; I go over the 
long, long plodding, the slow progress of seem- 
ingly endless days. Not only do I look upon the 
scenes which were transferred to the book, but, 
through sympathy, on others also that, for want 
of time, were left unsketched. Incidents of many 
kinds thrust their memories upon me. Some- 
times the experiences recalled were pleasurable; 
sometimes they were sad. But mirthful or 
tragic, pathetic or terrible, I go over them again, 
and the twelve hundred miles, nay, the fifteen 
hundred, considering the circuitous route that we 
were compelled to follow, pass before me like a 
moving panorama. Prairies, hills, streams, 
mountains, canons, follow each other in quick 
succession — all the ever-changing prospect be- 
tween the banks of the Missouri River and the 
Inland Sea. 

How rapidly we have grown ! What was once 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 23 

but dreams of the future first changed to reality, 
and then sank away until now they are but 
dreams of the past. No more the long train of 
dust-covered wagons, drawn by the slow and 
patient oxen, winds across the level plains or 
passes through the deep defile. No more the 
Pony Express or the lumbering stage-coach bring 
the quickest-word or forms the fastest transport 
between the inter-mountain region and "The 
States." How hard it is to understand the brief- 
ness of time that has passed since this great in- 
terior country was practically a howling wilder- 
ness, inhabited by bands of savage Indians and 
penetrated only by intrepid trappers or hunters ! 
As we are now whirled along over the Laramie 
Plains, the Humboldt Desert, or through the 
Echo or Weber Canons, reclining on luxuriously 
cushioned seats, and but a few hours away from 
the Atlantic or Pacific seaboards, we can scarcely 
realize it. Surely the locomotive plays a won- 
drous part in the destiny of modern nations. 
Without its aid the country through which we 
are about to pass might have become as was sur- 



24 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

mised by Irving, the cradle of a race inimical to 
the higher civilization to the East and West. 
Now we behold it a land giving promise of future 
greatness, where peace, wealth and happiness 
shall go hand in hand, and where already it is 
well-nigh impossible for the youth of today to 
fully comprehend the struggles and privations of 
its pioneer fathers. 

The sketches, the greater number, are roughly 
made. There was little time to loiter by the 
wayside. Some of them are hardly more than 
hasty outlines, filled in, perhaps, when the camp- 
ing-ground was reached. Some show an impres- 
sion dashed off of a morning or evening, or, 
sometimes, of a noonday. Once in a while there 
is a subject more carefully finished, telling of an 
early camp or of a half-day's rest. Some are in 
white and black merely, others in color. 

What a new delight it was to one young and 
city-bred, to mingle in the freedom of camp life 
such as we enjoyed near that spot. How sweet 
it was to pass the days and nights under the blue 
canopy of heaven! Three weeks we remained 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 25 

there; three weeks elapsed ere our train was 
ready to start. There was nothing very beauti- 
ful, it may be, in the scenery bordering upon 
"The Mad Waters," but it was wild and sylvan 
at the time, and we were excited by the prospect 
of those months of travel that lay before us. 

Between the high bank on which our wagons 
stood and the main course where the Missouri's 
waters flowed, was "The Slough." There, under 
the high branches of primeval trees, the river 
back-waters lay clear and still; there the wild 
grape vine ran riot ; there hung the green clusters 
of berries that would swell as we journeyed on, 
and that would be ripe ere we reached our jour- 
ney's end. There the young, and the old, too, 
resorted for their bath. Many the fair girl who 
made her toilet there, often, indeed, that some 
bright face was reflected in a silent pool, a na- 
ture's mirror, while its owner arranged anew her 
disheveled hair. The daughters of dusky sav- 
ages, of painted chiefs — the Tappas, the Pawnee 
or the Omaha — had, no doubt, used that place for 
the same purpose in other years. Little thought 



26 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

they of the white-faced maidens from distant 
lands beyond the great seas, perhaps of which 
they never heard, who should some day usurp 
their place. 

During our days of waiting ere we had started 
westward, often, indeed, our eyes were turned 
toward the sunset horizon. From there would 
come the train of wagons in which the greater 
number of emigrants would make "the journey." 
Often there was a false alarm. Each waiting 
emigrant, impatient of delay, would take some 
far-off cloud of dust to be that made by the ex- 
pected wagons. But often it was only bands of 
frontiersmen, Indians, or perhaps a band of an- 
telope. Would the train never come? How 
long this wait ! At length, well I remember the 
morning, the word was passed! It was the 
wagons for the emigrants. The half-cooked 
breakfast and the campfires were left deserted. 
Each and every one went forward to see the 
wagons that for so many weeks would be their 
homes. Some there were who had lover or rela- 
tive who had preceded them the years before and 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 27 

now their lover or relative returned for those 
whom they loved. All dust-covered and torn 
were the teamsters' clothes. Some were bare- 
headed. Yes, they had raced on the road. Two 
captains, our own, John D. Holladay, and another 
equally eager, had made a wager. Each one 
was positive that he would reach the banks of the 
Missouri first. In order to gain the wager our 
captain had aroused his men at the hour of mid- 
night, and in the darkness had forded the deep 
Elkhom River, and continued the journey east- 
ward while the members of the other company 
were enjoying their needed rest. 

A daring deed! But those pioneers of the 
west knew no fear. They were in earnest, too. 
Captain and teamsters alike shared both the joy 
and the pride in the winning of the wager. 

Then on the afternoon of the same day the 
other train arrived. O what a shouting and yell- 
ing then rent the air. Yet the rival captain and 
his teamsters took their defeat good naturedly. 
They had started eastward better equipped than 
was our captain, and yet the latter had won the 



28 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

race. Of this achievement of course we were 
proud. 

A supper and a ball were given by the losing 
company. And what a ball-room — the Wyo- 
ming Hotel. It was a long, low house of logs 
and the dance-room was lighted by a row of 
tallow candles, and the music was furnished by 
the teamsters from the west, and yet what a time 
of enjoyment it was! What a contrast between 
the refined young girls from across the seas, and 
those roughly clad men from the west. Yet in the 
future their lives were to be linked in one and 
their children in turn be builders of the western 
empire. 

Well do I remember, the afternoon, when our 
captain, that was to be, came to our portion of 
the Wyoming camp and listed those who were 
to journey as Independents, of which my father 
was one. That was the first time that I had 
beheld a typical captain of the western plains. 
And still I remember his massive form, his keen 
eye, his commanding voice and gestures. But 
his true southern accent plainly told that he had 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 29 

not long lived in the west, but was from the land 
of the sunny south. 

There should be a sketch of "The Slough," I 
remember such was made. Indeed, it should be 
the first in the book. But careless hands have 
torn it away. The first is one looking eastward 
over the river toward the Council Bluffs. For 
eastward lay the Missouri River. We saw the 
steamer Welcome, which had brought us up 
stream, the Red Wing, and other olden time 
boats passing occasionally up or down the stream. 
But westward the level horizon attracted our 
eyes and made us long for the time when we 
should start to follow the setting sun. 

Persistently, and with eager curiosity, the 
guide-book was scanned. For weeks ahead we 
studied the meagre information of "The Route." 
We learned the names, suggestively odd or 
quaintly poetic, and we pictured in the mind the 
places themselves to which they belonged. We 
formed conclusions to be realized later on or to 
be dispelled by the actualities. The imagination, 
heated to the utmost by traveler's tales — half 

8 



30 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

true, half false — looked forward to a region of 
wonder and romance. Already I had met that 
"boss of the frontier," the western tough, who 
had kindly offered with the help of his bowie- 
knife, to slit or cut off my youthful ears. I had 
looked upon the frontier log-cabin, half store, half 
bar, decorated with the skins of the beaver and 
the wolf, and seen the selling by the moccasined 
fur-traders of buffalo robes. Before us was the 
land of Kit Carson, we should pass through the 
domains of the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Crow 
and the Ute. We would see the Bad Lands ; the 
burial trees of the Arapahoe; the lands of the 
Medicine and the Scalp-Dance. In our path 
were the villages of the Prairie Dog, the home of 
the Coyote and the rattlesnake; of the antelope, 
of the buffalo, the big-horn and the grizzly bear. 
Prairie Creek, Loup Fork, Fort John, South Pass, 
Wind River Mountains — O many a name seized 
upon imagination and held it fast. 

And the names of Chiefs — Mad Wolf, Spotted 
Eagle, Two Axe, Rain-in-the-Face — they were 
as from some unwritten western Iliad. 




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THE PIONEER TRAIL. 31 

But I return to the sketch-book. Indeed it 
has made imagination wander. 

The second sketch in the book is a view near 
the Missouri River. It is looking westward and 
shows a Nebraska landscape with a prairie fire. 
The scene is, indeed, a very different one from 
what the place would present today. A great 
prairie fire is sweeping across the plain and the 
dense whirling mass of smoke, driven before the 
wind, and the principal feature of the sketch, 
overshadows with its darkness a far-reaching 
landscape of low, rolling hills, clumps of trees and 
a winding stream, in which, however, there is not 
a sign of human life visible. The stream is a 
small one, probably the Blue Creek, or it may be 
the Vermilion, or, perhaps, the Shell. Which 
one of these I have really forgotten. And the 
margin, too, is unmarked. Now that region is 
covered with villages and farms and the smoke is 
from the chimneys of homes where prosperity 
and modem comforts are to be found. The 
sketch shows a wilderness, so great is the change 
wrought since that day it was made. 



32 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

"The OTallen's Bluffs." The third sketch is 
a hast%' one. The sk\- and the river — the slow- 
flowing Platte, are responsive to the light of a 
golden sunset. The brilliant rays come from be- 
hind the huge, square, sedimentary cliffs, and 
which throw a shadow across the foreground. 
The main interest in the scene, however, is not 
that given by nature, but in the presence of man. 
It shows our long train of wagons — how slightly 
sketched — coming down from the bluffs, and 
winding toward the radiance along the dust^' 
road. 

And so — we had made a start I We had un- 
raveled, a few at least, of the mysteries attendant 
upon the management of cattle: we could yoke 
and unyoke: we knew the effects of "gee" and 
"haw." and could then throw four yards of black- 
snake whip with a skill and force that made its 
buckskin "cracker" explode with a noise like the 
report of a pistol. We knew, with tolerable ac- 
curacy, the moment when to apply, to let off the 
brake, the degree of modulation in the voice that 
would enable the intelligent oxen to understand 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 33 

just how much to swerve to the right or the left. 
We were fast becoming teamsters, "bull-whack- 
ers;" theory had given place to practical knowl- 
edge, and, moreover, we were not only becoming 
experts upon the road, but also in those many 
bits of untenable knowledge needed to make 
bearable the discomforts of camp-life. 

Dearly we learned to love the Platte ! Dearly 
we learned to love the wide and shallow stream. 
Even if the way was dresu-y at times, we forgot it 
when passing along the river banks. "Egypt, O 
Commander of the Faithful, is a compound of 
black earth and green plants, between a pulver- 
ized mountain and a red sand." So wrote Am- 
ron. Conqueror of Egypt, to his master, the 
Khalif Omar. And so might then have been 
said of the Valley of the Platte. Day after day 
we trudged along, and day after day the red hills 
of sandstone looked down upon us, or the prairie, 
like the desert, stretched out its illimitable dis- 
tance. The days grew into weeks, the weeks 
became a month, and still the cattle, freed from 
the yoke, hastened to slake their thirst at the 



34 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

well-loved stream. During that month, surely, 
we ate, each one of us, the peck of dirt — if sand 
may be classed as dirt — which every man is said 
to eat in his life time. It filled our eyes, too, and 
our ears, our nostrils. It was in the food; it 
sprinkled the pan-cakes ; it was in the syrup that 
we poured over them. Half suffocated were we 
by it, during some night-wind, as we lay beneath 
our wagons. O, ye sand hills of the Platte — in- 
deed we have cause to remember. 

To the Overland traveller of today, the Platte 
is almost unknown. But from the time we first 
discovered the stream, yellowed by the close of a 
July day, and overhung by ancient cottonwood 
trees, until we bade it farewell at Red Rocks, 
within view of Laramie Peak, it seemed, was, in- 
deed, a friend. As on the edge of the Nile, the 
verdure on its banks was often the only greenness 
in all the landscape round. 

"What possible enjoyment is there in the long 
and dreary ride over the yellow plains," Rideing, 
in his "Scenery of the Pacific Railway," asks that 
question. "The infinite space and air does not 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 35 

redeem the dismal prospect of dried-up seas. The 
pleasures of the transcontinental journey," he 
goes on to say, "may be divided into ten parts, 
five of which consist of anticipation, one of reali- 
zation, and four of retrospect." With us, at least, 
it was different. From the railway one is but a 
beholder of the scenery; but in "The Old Jour- 
ney" we were partakers therein. We became 
acquainted with the individualities, as it were, of 
the way. And then how we crept from one oasis 
of verdure to another. In the simple scenic com- 
bines, too, of the river, rock and trees, what 
change ! But the railway did not follow our 
devious course. 

One there was in our company who, like Phil 
Robinson, of travel fame, remembered the prin- 
cipal places along the road by the game he had 
shot there. Here he had dropped a mallard or a 
red-head; there, upon that hillside he had made 
havoc among a covey of rock-partridge, in that 
grove secured the wild turkey, or, on the banks 
of that stream, he had brought down a deer, and 
on that plain had ridden down a buffalo. A good 



36 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

way this, no doubt, to remember the leading 
features, and special places through which our 
journey lay; but, unlike my fellow traveller, I 
recall now all the good spots for bathing. O, 
what joy it was, after a half, or full day's experi- 
ence of dust and toil to plunge into the cooling, 
cleansing waters of spring or stream. O, the 
Platte! But I must not omit my pleasure in 
other waters. Now I see the waves of the Elk- 
horn, now those of the Big and the Little Lara- 
mie; and, now, through a fringe of long-leaved 
arrow-wood, the cold, deep waters of Horse Shoe 
Creek. One day as I bathed, Spotted Tail, the 
famous Sioux Chieftain, and his band of five hun- 
dred braves, passed along the banks of the Platte. 
Open mouth I stared at the wild cavalcade, and 
while wading ashore, I struck my foot against, 
as it proved to be upon examination, a great 
stone battleaxe. Perhaps it once belonged, at 
some remote period of time, to another great 
chief in that famed and haughty warrior's an- 
cestry. 

"A Gathering Storm" — the unbroken prairies! 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 37 

We are brought by this subject to grand phe- 
nomena. Heavens what piles of cloud, what sol- 
emn loneliness! The clouds — no wonder that 
the Indian of the plain has many a legend about 
them! 

"Gloomy and dark art thou, O chief of the 

mighty Omahas; 
Gloomy and dark as the driving cloud whose 

name thou hast taken." 

"Billowy bays of grasses ever rolling in shadow 
and sunshine." 

Magnificent! But this imperfect little sketch 
cannot reveal the truth, can only suggest. No- 
where are the clouds more wonderful than when 
over, never is solitude more impressive than in 
the open prairies. 

The clouds, the clouds ! Yes, through many a 
twilight hour, I watched, lying upon the tufted 
prairie as the camp-fires died away, the clouds. 
Weird was the hectic flushing, the glow of the 



38 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

sheet lightning among the July and August cu- 
muli. But these clouds in the sketch are filled 
with portent. Not only is the prairie darkened 
with the approach of night, but with the coming 
storm. 

Here are two famous objects ; famous, at least, 
in those days, not far apart, and following each 
other in the book — "The Court House," and 
"The Chimney Rock." Distinctly I remember 
the day on which we first sighted the latter — a 
pale blue shaft above the plain. We had just 
formed the last semi-circle of our noon corral and 
through its western opening was seen the Chim- 
ney, wavy through the haze that arose from the 
heated ground. It was my father who pointed it 
out to me. It afterwards seemed to us that the 
slow-going oxen would never reach it; or, rather, 
that they would never arrive at the point in the 
road opposite that natural curiosity ; for the emi- 
grant trail passed several miles to the northward 
of the low range of bluffs of which "the Chimney 
Rock" is a part. One evening several of our 
company tried to walk from our nearest camp to 



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THE PIONEER TRAIL. 39 

the terraced hills that formed the Chimney's base, 
but the distance proved too great. That was one 
of our first lessons in the deceptiveness of space 
— the distance to hills and mountains. 

From the banks of Lawrence Creek, from 
where the sketch was made, the bluffs, and the 
Half- Way-Post, the name by which the Chimney 
is sometimes suggestively referred to, are most 
picturesque. Strings of wild ducks arose from 
the rushes of the creek side as our train ap- 
proached. 

"Scotts' Bluffs" make a very different picture 
from those of the O'Fallen's. The sedimentary 
heights of the former, with their strong resem- 
blance to walls and towers, are shown in the 
sketch rosy with the light of the rising sun. In 
the middle distance, in a little swale of the pic- 
ture, is a train corralled, the still blue smoke ris- 
ing in many a straight column from the morning 
camp-fires. In the foreground are sun-flowers, a 
buffalo-skull among them. 

Ah! here is a sad, dark sketch — "Left by the 
Roadside." A tall, rank growth, and a low, half- 



40 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

sunken headboard are seen against the sky in 
which lingers yet a red flush of the twihght. Two 
or three stars shed their pale rays from afar, and 
one feels that the silence, is unbroken by even the 
faintest sigh of wind. But certainly there will 
come one soon, a long, shivering, almost moan- 
like sound, as the night wind begins to steal 
across the waste and gently stirs the prairie grass 
and flowers. 

Yes, after those years it is the Human Com- 
edy; it is the never-ending drama! It is the 
wonder of that which grows upon one. It is the 
desires, hopes, trials, pleasures, sorrows of the 
race ! It is the remembered action that interests 
me in these sketches. The book is filled with the 
transcripts of once noted places, but my mind, as 
I look upon them, is filled with thoughts of men 
and women. It is those who passed among the 
scenes who are of interest now. I recall the Pio- 
neers themselves. I think of them, filled with 
hope, yet anxious, eager to begin the new life 
that lay before them. 

The action! The search for the Fountain of 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 41 

Youth, the desire for knowledge, the thirst for 
gold, these have led men into the wilds; it has 
taken them to brave unknown dangers in un- 
known lands. Yes, these, the Propaganda and 
the love of Freedom, but neither is stronger than 
the desire for Religious Liberty. Ponce de Leon 
in the Land of Flowers; Lewis and Clark making 
their way along the Oregon, the Catholic Fath- 
ers, the gold-seekers of California, and the Puri- 
tans of New England— these are our examples. 
And like the latter were the Pioneers who pre- 
ceded us along our way. And our company, too, 
such it was that led them. Near the frontier I 
had looked into a deserted cabin — it revealed the 
ending of a drama. He who would have found 
the magic waters, the home and the gold-seeker 
left behind them many a lonely grave. The Pro- 
pagandist, the Lover of Freedom left their bones 
in many an unknown spot. And the Pioneers? 
They, too, must leave their dead. He who built 
that deserted cabin had met with failure, — death 
was the end. But the seekers of Religious Lib- 
erty? Surely they must have found the greater 



42 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

consolation in the hour of trial; to them must 
have come more quickly the thought of peace. 

Action! It is true; one might have become 
easily wearied of the monotonous trip. The 
shifting panorama might have become monoto- 
nous in its shifting. Monotonous, I mean, were 
it not for, I repeat the word — the action. The 
plains, the streams, the rocks, the hills, all be- 
came important because these led the way. Ever 
my thought is of the road. 

Countless in numbers almost were the graves, 
on plain and mountain, those silent witnesses of 
death by the way. The mounds were to be seen 
in all imaginable places. Each day we passed 
them, singly or in groups, and sometimes, nay, 
often, one of our own company was left behind 
to swell the number. By the banks of streams, 
on grassy hillocks, in the sands, beneath groves 
of trees, or among piles of rock, the graves were 
made. We left the new mounds to be scorched 
by the sun, beaten upon by the tempests, or for 
beauty or desolation to gather around as it had 
about many of the older ones. Sometimes when 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 43 

we camped the old graves would be directly 
alongside the wagons. I recall sitting by one 
that was thickly covered with grass and without 
a headboard while I ate my evening meal, and of 
sleeping by it at night. One remains in my mind 
as a very soothing little picture, a child's grave; 
and it was screened around with a thicket of wild 
rose that leaned lovingly over it, while the mound 
itself was overgrown with bright, green moss. 
I fancied then that the parents of that child were 
they yet living, the mother, who, no doubt, had 
left that grave with such agony of heart, such 
blinding or tearless grief, would have liked, in- 
deed, to have heard the sweet singing of the wild 
birds in the rose thicket, and have seen how 
daintily nature had decked that last bed of the 
loved one. 

How painful were the circumstances attending 
the first burial in our train. A woman died one 
evening, we were about ten days out, just as the 
moon had risen over the prairies, and swiftly the 
tidings spread through the camp. Next morn- 
ing, it was the Sabbath Day, she was buried, laid 



44 THE PIONKia^ TRAIL. 

to rest on a low. j^rassy hill to[) near the banks 
of a stream. Never can I lOii^ct the ^rief of her 
children as the body of their mother was lowered 
into the ground. I can hear their cries yet, 
those cries that they gave, as they were led away, 
and their wagon departed with the rest. A net- 
work of stakes was placed across the grave to 
keep away the robber wolves; a short, short ser- 
mon was preached, a hymn was then sung, ac- 
companied by the plaintive wailing of a clarinet, 
and prayer made to the services a solemn close. 

That first death made a sad impression upon 
us. But after a while the burials from our com- 
pany had become so frequent, that they lost 
much of their saddening power; or, rather, we 
refused to retain so deeply the sadness, throwing 
it off in self defense. 

The outline which follows brings up a different 
train of thought — "Camp material abandoned 
after an attack by Indians," The ground is lit- 
tered with all sorts of indescribable things. Panic 
is evident in the reckless tossing away of every 
kind of articles; anything to lighten the loads. 



Till-: PIONKKR TRAIL. 45 

so that the fear-struck emigrants could hurry 
forward. This was the train immediately pre- 
ceding ours, and a couple of days later we passed 
one of those prairie letters — an ox-shoulder blade 
or skull — on which was written: 

"Captain Chipman's train passed here 

August 14th, 1866. 

8 deaths, 

90 head of cattle driven away by the Indians. 

Great scare in camp." 

Apropos of alarms from Indians there is a 
rapidly executed subject, from memory the next 
day, that brings back a night of peril and sorrow. 
It was on the western slope of the Black Hills, 
and there were four wagons of us belated from 
the general train. We were the last five on the 
right-wing, anrl the right-wing was the latter 
half of the train that night, so, practically, we 
were alone. There was a dead woman in the 
wagon next to ours, and to hear the weeping and 
sobbing of her little children, in the dark beside 



46 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

the corpse, was heart chilling. The poor hus- 
band trudged along on foot hurrying his single 
yoke of footsore cattle. Still we were far be- 
hind; liable at any moment to be cut-off by the 
prowling Sioux. That was a night to remember. 

Here are two scenes among the Black Hills 
themselves, one is a very suggestive sketch show- 
ing rocks, timber-clad bluffs, and ragged peaks 
with the wagons of our train coming down a 
deep declivity into a dry torrent bed. Wild 
clouds are coming over the peaks threatening a 
stormy night. It appears that the wagons must 
topple over, end over end, so abrupt is the de- 
scent they are making. In the second sketch, 
made on the evening of the following day, the 
train is seen winding like a serpent over the 
hills. In the middle distance is a valley, partly 
obscured by mists, and beyond it Laramie Peak, 
purple against the sunset clouds and sky. 

The night drives were among the most trying 
experiences upon the Overland Journey. Usually 
they were made necessary to us from the drying 
up of some spring or stream where we had ex- 










Mv.%:,:M 



tfc: 



o 
Co 









THE PIONEER TRAIL. 47 

pected to make our evening camp, and the conse- 
quent lack of water for the people as well as 
cattle, so that we must move forward. Our 
worst drive of this kind was to reach the La 
Prelle River after leaving Fort Laramie, Saint 
John's, on the night which followed the making 
of the first of the two sketches just mentioned. 
Wildly the lightnings glared, their livid tongues 
licked the ground beside us. The road was de- 
luged in the downpour of rain; and what with 
the sudden flashes of light, the crashing of thun- 
der, the poor cattle were quite panic-stricken. It 
was hard work to make the poor brutes face the 
storm. Yet, after all, their sagacity was greater 
than ours. Several times we would have driven 
them over the edge of a precipice had not their 
keener senses warned them back. We would 
have shuddered, so our Captain afterwards told 
us, could we have seen where the tracks of our 
wagon wheels were made that night. 

Yes, to the emigrant company of those days, 
the drying up of a stream was often of serious 
import. Water enough might have been carried 



48 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

to quench the thirst of human beings, but what 
of the many cattle? The ox that suffers too 
much from thirst becomes a dangerous animal. 
Let him scent in the distance the coveted water, 
and who shall curb his strength? How nearly 
we met with disaster from this same cause. 
Almost useless were the brakes ; how fiercely the 
thirst tortured animals strained at their yokes. 
It was a pitiful sight, and as we approached the 
broken, boulder-strewn edge of the stream, our 
position was somewhat dangerous. No less 
dangerous was the task of removing the yokes 
from the impatient creatures, and of unloosing 
the chains. 

I try to recall my diary, for I did keep a diary. 
I did not find it among the old relics where was 
hidden the sketch-book, and the chances are that 
long since it has been destroyed, perhaps fed to 
the flames. In spite of slightness it must have 
contained many an interesting fact about "The 
Journey." But I cannot recall a word. The 
events which gave rise to its entries grow fresh 
in my mind, but the wording of the matter itself 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 49 

is gone. I know it contained the data which 
would give the exact number of hours in which 
we were upon the road, and that I would like to 
know. I remember writing about Scott's Bluffs, 
and how they received their name. One fancied 
that he could see the wounded trapper, aban- 
doned and dying alone, and wondered if he 
crawled down from the bluffs, and along the way 
we were travelling. And which was the spot, 
too, where, at last, his bones were found. There 
was something, too, about the gathering of buf- 
falo chips, and the seeking of firewood. On the 
latter quest, what lonely spots we did visit ! One 
comes to my mind at this moment. How weirdly 
the wind choired in the ancient cedars, and how 
very old appeared the boulders with their mot- 
tling of lichens, and with what a dismal yelp a 
ragged coyote leaped from his lair and scam- 
pered down a rock-strewn gully! It was tanta- 
lizing at times to keep to the road. How could 
one resist the temptation to throw off restraint, 
and, putting all prudence aside, wander or go 
galloping on horseback away over hill and 



50 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

through dale ? What if the redman did lie in the 
path? He could be a brother. O, but to be like 
the Indian; to live wild and free, to be "iron- 
jointed, supple-sinewed, to hurl our lances in the 
sun!" 

This, of course, was on those days when, hav- 
ing taken "the winds and sushine into our veins," 
we felt stirred within us the instincts of primal 
man. At other times we were sober-minded 
enough. The romance of being out in the wilds 
was terribly chilled by an inclement sky. A few 
days of drizzling rain tried the most ardent spirit. 
Then it was that the disagreeableness of the time 
made the true metal of the emigrant show itself. 
Whatever traits of character he possessed — self- 
ishness, senseless fault-finding, or those rare 
qualities of kindness, cheerful content, and ready 
helpfulness — all come out. In Mark Tapley's 
own phrase, it was all very well to "come out 
strong" when by the warm glow of the flames or 
when moving along with the bright blue sky 
above us, but it was quite another task to remain 
cheerful when the incessant rain made impossible 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 51 

even the smallest or most sheltered of camp- 
fires, and one crept into his bed upon the ground 
with wet clothes and with flesh chilled to the 
bone, without even the solace of a cup of hot tea 
or coffee. 

Hardly less trying were the days of dust- 
storms. What misery it was when the wind 
blew from the front and the whole cloud of dust 
raised by over three hundred yoke of cattle, and 
the motion of sixty-five wagons drove in our 
faces! How intolerably our eyes and our nos- 
trils burned, and how quickly our ears were filled 
with the flying sand or alkali ! 

I should like to read once more, those diary 
entries. Was there anything written, I wonder, 
about those silhouettes upon the hills? What 
did it tell, if anything, about the alarm that was 
spread through our Company? Had we — the 
unlearned — known more about the ways of the 
Indian we would have realized that they — those 
shadows— were no Sioux. Yet it was disturbing 
to the unknowing to see those figures, those 
mysteriously moving horsemen of the night. 



52 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

Thank heaven! It was but our own scouting 
herdsmen. But for once, to those assembled 
within the corral centre, O, how too long seemed 
the hymn, and even the prayer ! How impatient 
we were to know the truth. 

In "The Cedar Bluffs" the wagons that are 
sketched corralled are not our own. They com- 
prised a small freight train, and right glad would 
they have been to, and most likely they did, creep 
along, as it were, in our wake. There were no 
women or children in that train, its members 
were all of the daring "freighter." These were 
men willing to meet with any danger. Perhaps 
there might be among them men inexperienced, 
but they must have possessed intrepid hearts. 
Rough of the rough, but daring they certainly 
were. Woe to that little band if later they met 
the Sioux. It would mean, for them, annihila- 
tion. What rude pranks the Indian did some- 
times play! The Sioux or Cheyenne, he would 
take bales of bright stuffs which he sometimes 
found in the freighters' wagons, fasten one end 
of it to his pony and let the hundred yards un- 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 53 

ravel and flaunt on the winds as wildly he dashed 
across the plain. There was a brutally comic 
side to the character of the western Indian. 

A brutal side ! Yes, and there was often a 
comic side to the white man's fear. Well, in- 
deed, a friend of mine has told it. Twelve young 
men comprised a company; two wagons and six 
yoke of oxen made up their outfit. That cer- 
tainly was taking their risks in those perilous 
times! Yet they were unmolested. Once, in- 
deed, they thought themselves at the mercy of 
the Sioux ; as truly, in another way they were. 
Death and the scalping-knife appeared their lot. 
But it was all a hoax. What had been taken for 
the painted savage was but a party of whites 
with blankets over their heads to keep away 
the rain. Taking into consideration the really 
dangerous position of the little band, there was 
a tragic-farcical touch in their list of arms. My 
friend's sole means of defense was a butcher- 
knife some six inches long. 

But in a later adventure, so he told me, the 
farcical part was left out. That was an experi- 



54 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

ence in which, if the tragedy was also wanting, 
there was a most severe test upon his nerves. He 
had left the camp, taking a fowling piece with 
him, and he wandered along a stream. He had 
just taken sight upon a skein of wild fowl, and 
was about to fire, when suddenly a band of In- 
dians came from behind a bank, and in another 
instant the shot would have been among them. 
But luckily he had not pulled the trigger. How- 
ever his attitude, the pointed gun made him an 
object of suspicion. The Indians were upon the 
war-path, but not with the whites just then. My 
friend was surrounded, and he must explain to 
the satisfaction of the savages who he was, and 
why he was there. He was finally released, how- 
ever, upon proof that he was from a camp of 
whites near by. But all the same it was an or- 
deal to stand surrounded by those painted sav- 
ages, scalps dangling from their pony saddles. 
And it was one that the actor therein would not 
have cared to repeat. 

It did produce upon one a disturbing sensation ; 
that knowledge, I mean, of how often the eyes of 



)/■ K I' ' • 




f 






THE PIONEER TRAIL. 55 

ambushed Indians might be fixed upon one. And 
the wild animals, too! From the distance they 
watched. Herds of buffalo, perhaps, or of deer, 
looked upon our moving train from the plateau 
tops. Beyond the flaming yellow sunflowers, 
amid the bright red of the rocky hills, the Sioux 
was often concealed. His face was painted of 
the same gaudy colors, and he looked with blood- 
lust upon us. We knew not when this might be ; 
yet that it was always possible gave a sort of 
aspect of menace to the bluffs and hills along the 
way. 

Many a time had Captain Holladay with his 
natural caution gained from experience ; his sa- 
gacity and knowledge, given a timely warning. 
The girls must not be led too far by their passion 
for the gathering of flowers. How often had the 
desire to possess some especially beautiful or bril- 
liant, some alluring bunch of desert bloom tempt- 
ed them beyond the lines of safety. Especially 
true was this among the Black Hills and the 
mountain ranges, too, beyond them. There was 
danger, also, in the going for water, the dipping 



56 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

places were often at quite a distance from the 
camp. How terrible an example was that which 
occurred in one of the trains which crossed the 
Hills the year before our own. It was on the 
banks of the LaBonte River. A band of five 
Sioux suddenly dashed out from amid a clump of 
trees on the river bank, and carried away, beyond 
all hope of rescue, one of two girls who had rash- 
ly gone too far down the stream. The train re- 
mained at the river for a period of three days, the 
Indians were pursued for many miles, but it was 
all in vain. The young husband never saw his 
young wife again. One of the young women was 
slightly in advance of the other, and those few 
steps made this difference, that one was lost, the 
other saved. And the young woman who es- 
caped was the writer's sister. 

Something of all the passions ; something of aU 
the passions — joy, love, hope, fear, and the 
others, too, must have been recorded in the pages 
of that diary. Or, rather, there should have been 
had the youthful writer of those pages put down 
upon them what he once actually looked upon, 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 57 

as now he recalls them mentally. They must 
have told, too, how a foe even stronger than the 
Sioux, one not to be gainsaid, took away a sister 
at last. We took the oaken wagon seats to make 
her little coffin. Did it tell how we laid her away 
to rest; after those days of suffering, when she 
was carried by turns in our arms, to save her 
what pain we could ; did it tell, then, how she was 
laid beneath the cottonwoods, where ripple the 
waters of the Laramie, and how the soil was 
hardly replaced in the grave ere we must depart? 
Did it tell of the wild night of storm and dark- 
ness, through which later we passed? The re- 
mainder of "The Journey" was for us, darkened 
by that ever-remembered tragedy. 

Love, upon "The Journey" — O it was sure to 
come ! Where will not love follow, where is it 
not to be found? Coquettishly the sun-bonnet 
may be worn ; coquettishly the sun-flower may be 
placed at the waist, or the cactus bloom amid the 
dark-brown hair. By what strange and circuit- 
ous routes are lovers brought to meet ! Through 
what strange and unforseen circumstances does 



58 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

love begin! In our Company were there not 
those maidens who could still walk coquettishly 
and with grace, although it was their truthful 
boast that their feet had measured each mile of 
the lengthened way? Were there not those in 
whose red cheeks the prairie sun kissed English 
blood? The man from the west, why should he 
not learn to love that beauty from Albion's Isle? 
How delightful when danger did not lie in am- 
bush, to walk, arm locked in arm, far ahead of the 
leading wagon; how delightful to sit amid the 
flowers and to feel the solitude of the boundless 
prairie! Yet love is a danger that lurks every- 
where. To linger, ever so short a distance be- 
hind the train was a grave offense. Each mem- 
ber of the Company knew this rule, they knew it 
was a rule that must not be broken. Of course 
one need not make a capture as did that savage 
brave ; one need not, whirling by upon his desert 
horse, stoop sideways and lift to his side a 
screaming and unwilling bride. Nor did one 
care to imitate that enamored chieftain of the 
Cheyennes. Should one make an offer of a hun- 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 59 

dred ponies? Yet, if the Captain, upon his steed, 
like a Knight of old, should be found with a 
pretty girl riding beside him, what an example 
for others to follow ! One there was in our Com- 
pany, a youth, who had returned from the west, 
passing over the road again to find his father's 
grave. He had come, too, to meet his mother 
and sister by the Missouri's banks. Fate had 
willed, however, that the father's grave should 
not be found ; two years had elapsed since it had 
been made, and nature, with storm and floods had 
hidden it away, and so the one who slept there, 
sleeps there still, and the mountain winds, the 
thunder, and the voice of the passing stream, still 
make his requiem. On that eastward trip our 
Captain had learned to love this youth. And on 
the westward trip he learned to love even more 
the sister. For she it was who later became our 
Captain's wife. But why repeat the romance? 

Life, Romance, Death — indeed they were busy 
in our little world ! The space between the two 
semi-circles of wagons made a wide division; it 
was like the two sides of a street, each wagon a 



60 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

dwelling. One could hardly believe that in such 
a company, isolated from all the rest of mankind, 
such a separation could exist. Yet such a separa- 
tion existed between "the wings." At times the 
members of the one side hardly knew what was 
happening among those of the other. But there 
were certain events, of course, that would form 
the link. As we proceed upon our way what 
changes come ! I mean into the lives and hearts 
of many. But come there new joy, or come there 
new sorrow, the Pioneer must live the pioneer's 
life. There were always the labor, the priva- 
tions, a certain kind of pleasure. There was left 
but little time in which to brood. Except, it may 
be, in the silent watches of the night. There was 
something remarkable, too, about the manner in 
which the cattle became imbued with the spirit 
of their driver. What individuality, for instance, 
there was among the cattle themselves, our own 
four yoke, I mean, it was modified by the driver. 
Tex and Mex, Spot and Jeff, how easy to distin- 
guish their characters from that of either Tom 
and Jerry, or Lep and Dick. And yet as a body 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 61 

how quickly they reflected the mental condition 
of the one who drove them. Be he calm, be he 
dejected or peevish, and the cattle knew it at 
once. 

Here is a suggestion of a sometimes unpleasant 
duty — "The Night Guard." His was a trust in 
which anxiety and danger were often combined. 
The picket on duty at the front of war is scarcely 
more important to the safety of the troops than 
was the Night-Guard to our Company. In those 
days of lawlessness in red man and white, con- 
stant vigil had to be kept. On the faithful per- 
formance of the Night-Guard's duty our safety 
depended. If we were not attacked, then the 
cattle might be driven away, and we might be left 
stranded, as it were, in the wilderness. Alone 
with his thoughts, this important one at his post, 
had ample opportunity for careful reflection. The 
youth of the writer released him from the duty of 
guard, and his father suffered from an accident — 
a foot partly crushed by one of the oxen — but as 
owners of cattle, as "Independents," we must do 
a share and a double task fell to the lot of an 



62 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

older brother. We had seen the disaster which 
came upon the Company preceding ours, and at 
Deer Creek we had also seen heaps of red and yet 
smoking embers, all that remained of the station 
there, and of the surrounding cabins. We knew 
that the Indians who had done both the acts of 
driving away the cattle and applying the torch, 
were, in all likelihood, watching upon the road 
for us. Our Captain never allowed an inexperi- 
enced man to occupy too important a post, but 
the "tenderfoot" could serve as aid. 

We, like ships that pass on the sea, sometimes 
spoke a returned. No gloomy recital of disap- 
pointment could turn us back. The Golden West 
was our goal, and those who returned were but, 
to us, the too timid ones. In truth, has not the 
dream of the Pioneer been fully realized? Those 
men and women who endured so much? Did 
they not gain, enmass, the victory? And those 
who fell by the way — they were as those who 
perish in battle, but who leave the fruits of their 
devotion and success to others. Those young 
men who put their shoulders to the wheels, when 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 63 

our wagon might have otherwise become fast in 
the quicksands of the Platte, and those older men 
and women, too, that I looked upon as they 
trudged toward the West with the dogged deter- 
mination of age, all made possible the future com- 
monwealth. They ate of the fruit that was 
raised from the soil, their sons and daughters in- 
herited the land. 

Men who now count their wealth by hundreds 
of thousands, some by the millions of dollars, can 
remember their vain strivings when poor and on 
night-guard to look into the future; to see some 
faint glimpses of what Providence held in store 
for them in the Westward, Ho ! 

Three subjects that follow are by the Sweet- 
water River. In one the Rattlesnake Hills are 
shown dim in the summer haze ; in the second is 
the Rock Independence, and in the third is the 
noted "Devil's Gate," with its reflection in a pool 
of the stream. What a real blessing, though per- 
haps in disguise, is often enforced attention; en- 
forced activity! Upon "The Journey" such it 
was. O, it was a balm to many an aching heart ! 



64 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

A blessing the swiftly-changing scenes, the labor, 
the unavoidable routine of camp-life! Those 
whose trials were so great ; those whose grief was 
so intense ; those who were so quickly compelled 
to leave the new-made graves of their dead ; yes, 
even these must take their part. There was no 
escape. It was a fiat — "thou shalt." The very 
aged, the sick would lift themselves up in their 
beds to look upon some famous place. The Rock 
Independence, The Devil's Gate — was not the 
writer propped up with pillows to look out, 
through the opening of the covers at the wagon 
front, upon them? Those places we had thought 
of, spoken of, for three months past — there they 
were. Many looked at them through tear- 
dimmed, or sick-weary eyes. The apathy that 
sometimes comes upon the traveller when he has 
reached some famous or hoped-for place, is well 
understood. But sometimes these climaxes are 
too strong even for that to conquer. The burial- 
tree of the Sioux ; the first band of Indian braves; 
the buckskin dressed, the beaded, the dusky beau- 
ty of the wild, they made a claim. Yes, as I 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 65 

said, even the heart-stricken must look around, 
must take an interest, even if languid or dislik- 
ing, in the passing world. There was perhaps a 
cruel kindness in this fact. All were compelled 
to hear the music, the singing, the laughing, the 
dancing, that followed, be the Company never so 
weary, after many a long day's travel. This all 
could hear as well as the hymn, the prayer. A 
sudden shout — "antelope!" "buffalo!" would 
rouse the most dejected. Weariness, grief, found 
many a strange yet wholesome tonic. 

These questions occur to me while I write : 
Had the emigrants remained at home, would 
more of them have lived, would more of them 
have died? I mean, would they have longer 
lived, have later died? Ah, where comes not 
life's tragedy? Come or go, remain — the end is 
still the same ! 

"An Exhausted Ox." This was a sight that 
was not infrequent. When, upon the road, the 
strength of an ox gave out, when it could go no 
further, and tottered or fell, wearied beyond en- 
durance, beside its mate, it was a matter of no 



66 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

small import. It meant, perhaps, the loss of the 
yoke, of their use, I mean, for it was hard to re- 
mate an ox upon the road. Yet, at times, it must 
be done. A plug of tobacco, bound between two 
slices of bacon, such was the medicine that was 
administered to the ailing ox. It was a kill or a 
cure ; sometimes it was the one, sometimes it was 
the other. Lep and Dick, the "wheelers" to our 
leading wagon, were the largest cattle in the en- 
tire train. And Dick, especially, was big, and he, 
at our very last camping-ground, laid down and 
died. But it was from the eating of wild parsley. 
But, in few cases, there was hardship, distress in- 
flicted upon the emigrant by the loss of cattle. I 
have already instanced one case, that of the un- 
fortunate man, whose wife died at night upon the 
slopes of the Black Hills. 

I am here reminded to mention another fact. 
It was really quite a disclosure to see the chang- 
ing appearance of the train. Not alone as it 
changed from week to week, becoming more and 
more travel marked, but also as it changed in 
appearance, in order, I mean, from hour to hour, 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 67 

as we moved upon the road. In making the daily 
start — morn or noonday — the wagons would take 
their place in the line with an almost mathemat- 
ical accuracy. The noses of each leading yoke of 
cattle would nearly touch the end-board of the 
wagon preceding them. But soon this order was 
broken. Such an incident as that related in the 
former paragraph, or if not the actual happening, 
then the weakened pulling force caused by some 
happening of the day or week before, was the 
cause. And, of course, this became the more 
pronounced amid the mountains than upon the 
plains. To keep this train compact under the cir- 
cumstances was one of the chief labors of the 
Captain and his aids. 

Here is a wide gap in the locale of the sketches. 

It is the result of a mountain fever. What a 
gloriously majestic outline the peaks of the Wind 
River Mountains make, and especially from that 
spot, the High Springs, in the South Pass ! De- 
lightsome days were ours as we moved slowly 
forward through that broad and famous highway, 
with that towering range of mountains all the 

6 



68 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

while seeming to gaze down upon us! Joyfully 
we burst into song : 

"All hail ye snow-capped mountains! 
Golden sunbeams smile." 

We made there, in the South Pass, if I count 
correctly, our two hundredth camp-fire. There, 
indeed, with our veiw, were the mountains ; there, 
among those gray and storm-worn boulders of 
granite, welled forth the waters — those that 
flowed not to be lost in the Atlantic, but in the 
Pacific. That dividing line, that mighty ridge 
was the "Backbone of the Continent." Indeed, 
with our first descent, and we were with the 
West. Pacific Creek would be our next camp- 
ing spot, and westward its waters would run. 
From either of these great peaks, the Snowy or 
Fremont's, how near we might see to the place of 
our destination. From these summits might we 
not discern other summits; mountains farther to 
the west; the ranges whose bases were near to 
the Inland Sea? Afar away it was over the 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 69 

heights and vales, and yet it brought a message 
— "You are near the place of rest." 

"A Buffalo Herd." This sketch could well 
have preceded several, instead of following, the 
one that it does. By the Sweetwater and along 
the reaches of the Platte, there we sighted buf- 
falo. And in Ash Hollow, too, and by La Foche, 
or the East Boise River, we had seen the shaggy 
creatures. Here, across a wind-swept level, be- 
tween two mountain slopes, the buffalo were 
changing pasture, moving leisurely toward the 
south. They knew when would come the storms; 
they knew where better they should be met. 
Each eye-witness has told, verbally or in print, 
how a distant herd of buffalo appears. They re- 
semble a grove of low, thick-set trees or bushes. 
On a distant plain or along a hillside, their round- 
ed forms might be easily mistaken, were it not 
for the moving, for clustered, sun-browned shrub- 
oak. Ash Hollow was once a familiar resort for 
the now rare animal. A traveller once saw there 
a herd which could scarcely have numbered less 
than fifty to sixty thousand. So vast were once 



70 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

the herds in the Valley of the Upper Platte, that 
it would sometimes take several days for one of 
them to pass a given point. Woe to the small 
party of emigrants that happened to be in their 
track — I mean a herd of frightened buffaloes. 
Annihilation was their fate. The herd that we 
now looked upon was not so great, yet it was 
large enough to resemble a moving wood. Slow 
at first, then with a headlong rush, and then, 
thank heaven ! the herd dashed in another direc- 
tion than ours. 

Helter skelter, maddened by fear, with nostrils 
distended, with set and glaring eyes, blind as 
their wild fellows, scarcely less dangerous, was a 
stampede of cattle. No longer the patient, sub- 
missive creatures, whose pace seemed ever too 
slow to our eager desires, but stupid beasts, full 
of fury, dashing, they knew, they cared not, 
where. A stampede of yoked and hitched cattle 
was one of the most thrilling episodes of our 
Journey. What was the cause of the stampede 
I cannot recall, but its terror I will not forget. 
What a screaming came from my younger broth- 










^ 



(i. 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 71 

ers, huddled in the wagon, and I may add with 
truth, the delighted laughter of a baby sister. 
What a moment was that in which the racing cat- 
tle headed towards a steep, overhanging bank of 
the Platte ! It was the climax to many a night- 
mare for many a year thereafter. 

And while, through this misplaced subject — 
"The Buffalo Herd" — I go backward, as it were, 
on our journey, I might refer to a sketch that is 
partly torn away from the book. From what 
remains of the leaf I gather that the drawing 
which once covered it when entire, was "The 
Passing of the Mail-Coach." On the slopes of 
Long Bluff there lay a wreck. It was the skele- 
ton, as one might call it, what remained of a 
coach, that had been stopped by the Sioux. The 
leather was cut from its sides, by the Indians who 
had killed the driver and driven away the horses; 
and the ribs of wood and iron stuck up from the 
sand and gravel that had been washed around it. 
But this one in the sketch was not a coach that 
told of a tragedy, but one that went speeding by 
our camp, leaving a cloud of dust. In our hearts 



72 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

were regrets that we could not speed as fast. "The 
Man on the Box" was important in his day. He 
was an autocrat of the plains. When he brought 
the coach to its destination, that was if he hap- 
pened to be on what was called "the last drive," 
he would draw on his tight-fitting, high-heeled 
boots; he would wear his richly-embroidered 
gloves; he would be the hero at "the Hall," the 
swell at "The Dance." 

For us was it not tantalizing to know how 
quickly, compared with our slow progress, that 
coach would reach "The End?" Somewhere, 
probably ere we reached the mountains, we 
would meet that coach returning. The Jehu 
who drove it would come to recognize our Com- 
pany as he passed us by. The guard of soldiers 
would know us, and he and they would pass, re- 
pass the train before us, and also the one that 
followed. Yes, we followed the original trail of 
the Pioneers but, of course, there had been 
changes. The Pony Express was a thing of the 
past, and soon the stage-coach would be. But 
this latter change was not yet. There were ru- 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 73 

mors, too, surveyors had been seen near the Mis- 
souri's banks. Anon, and the iron-steed would 
course the plains; it would find a path through 
the mighty hills. But this, too, was not yet. O, 
we were in a wilderness, true! No need for us 
to see the wreck of the mail-coach, the burned 
station, or the dead Pony Express, arrow-slain, 
the pouches gone, the letters that would be so 
long waited for, scattered to the many winds. 
No need of this, for us to know the dangers we 
had passed, or to make us rejoice that we had 
arrived in safety thus far. 

Who would blame us for our times of merri- 
ment? Who shall wonder at the time of rejoic- 
ing that followed on our arrival at Pacific Creek? 
Of whether our biggest jubilation was at Chim- 
ney Rock, or whether it was there, our first camp- 
ing place on the Western Slope, I fail to be sure. 
But this I know, whether it were at the one or at 
the other, the facts about it are the same. 
Blankets were stretched between two wagons, a 
sheet was hung, there was a shadow pantomime, 
declamations were given, songs were sung. O, it 



74 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

was indeed a time of gaiety ! When the evening 
meal was over and the call of the sweet-toned 
clarinet assembled all in the open corral, then 
what times! Men and women, the young, and 
the old ones, too, danced the hours away. Who 
would have thought there had been such a hard 
day's journey? Forgotten were the fatigues that 
had' been; and those that were to come. It was 
such hours as these that atoned for those that 
had been wearisome, for those that were sad. 

That clarinet — what an important part it held ! 
It voiced the general feeling of the train. Be the 
company sad or merry, like a voice it spoke. Mer- 
rily, on the banks of the Missouri it sounded at 
the moment of starting, mournfully it spoke as 
each one who fell by the wayside was laid to his 
rest. 



I seem to hear it once more as when it awoke 
us, too, for the last start near the Journey's end. 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 75 

Its remembered strains bring back the scent of 
prairie flowers and the mountain sage. 

Here is the "Ford of the Green River." This 
reviewing has been lengthy, but we near its close. 
This ford of the river is not where the railway 
crosses it at the present time, but farther up the 
stream, where in the distance, to the north-east, 
the jagged summit of the Wind River Mountains 
were again in view, and where on the river banks 
are groups of cottonwood trees and thickets of 
wild raspberry and rose, and the air is aromatic 
with the exhalations of wild thyme. It is a stir- 
ring scene, for the water was both deep and swift 
and the fording not accomplished without con- 
siderable labor and risk. A half-day's rest on 
the banks of the Green River, as well as the at- 
tractiveness of the place itself, makes the scene of 
that sketch remembered with pleasure. 

Small need to tell how expectancy grew upon 
us as the number of miles ahead became less and 
less. Even those who had at last apparently 
grown apathetic and Wcdked silently along, or sat 
questionless in the wagons, began to again mani- 



76 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

fest the same eager interest which had marked 
the days of our starting out. Wake up! wake 
up! wake up! Fun and frolic must sometimes 
take the place of sentiment and sobriety, and so 
one who was ever brimming over with both, 
could not wait the poetic summons of the clar- 
ionet. Beating together two old tin pans he 
frisked around the corral, rousing with the un- 
seemly noise all laggards and slug-a-beds. 

"Cliffs of Echo Canon." This brings us within 
the borders of Utah. We had climbed from 
Green River to Cache Cave, we looked upon the 
one range of hills, the one only, that divided us 
from our destination. Clear shone the Septem- 
ber sun, as our long train moved slowly under the 
conglomerate cliffs; slowly, for half of the cattle 
were footsore, and all very weary. Several hours 
were consumed in passing through the wild de- 
file, and night was falling ere the mouth of the 
canon was reached. Later, as the camp-fires 
were blazing, the full moon illuminated the fan- 
tastic scene. 

Who of all those who traversed Echo Canon in 



THE PIONEER TRAIL. 77 

an ox-train will forget the shouting, the cracking 
of whips, the wild halloes, and the pistol-shots 
that resounded along the line, or the echoes, all 
confused by the multitude of sounds, and passing 
through each other like the concentric rings on a 
still pond when we throw in a handful of pebbles, 
flying from cliff to cliff, and away up in the shag- 
gy ravine and seeming to come back at last from 
the sky. 

"O hark, O hear! how thin and clear. 
And thinner, clearer, farther going ! 

Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying; 
Blow, bugle, answer echoes, dying, dying, 
dying." 

No wonder the place recalls Tennyson's song, 
but, it must be told, there were none of "the 
horns of Elfland faintly blowing" about the wild 
hilarity of sounds which were sent back from the 
cliffs that day. 

The last sketch in the book is "A Glimpse of 



78 THE PIONEER TRAIL. 

the Valley." Not one in our company but what 
felt the heart swell with joy as the sight of fields 
and orchards, in the latter of which hung ripened 
fruit, burst upon our sight. Danger and fatigues 
were all forgotten. The stubborn, interminable 
miles were conquered, "The Journey" was at an 
end. 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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